The thing is, 5-10% of their shared assets works out to over a hundred million dollars [1] if you include the slices of his companies that she's asking for. So while she couches her request in reasonable language she's actually asking for (IMHO) an unreasonable amount of wealth given she didn't create it in the first place.
[1] Which is over forty times the lifetime earnings of the average American simply for marrying well.
It's questionable whether she had no role in creating the money he made while they were married; marriage is usually a bit of a partnership, with a lot of mutual support. You can allege that he would've been just as successful if he hadn't been married during that period, but that's a hard counterfactual to prove, and depends essentially on arguing that his marriage, having kids, etc. provided no support at all that in any way contributed to his success during that period. And if you're going to indulge in those kinds of counterfactuals, then maybe he doesn't deserve his money either, because hey, maybe if he wasn't at PayPal, someone else would've done just a good a job, so he only got his money by essentially having the luck to be "married" to PayPal?
That's one reason that legally, money made while married is assumed to be evenly split, absent a separate agreement. I don't have any particular insight into his situation, but if, say, my parents had gotten divorced when I was a kid, I would've considered it fair if they split the money evenly, even though my dad officially made all of it.
Plus, if you put it the other way, he's keeping 90-95% of their shared wealth, over a billion dollars, and yet is unhappy with that, because he wants more? It doesn't sound like it has anything to do with control over his companies, either; the amount of stock she's asking for wouldn't affect controlling stakes at all. Seems like it's purely the money: either it's just greed (he has a ton, but wants even more), or some variety of spite (he doesn't care about the money, but doesn't want his ex-wife to get it).
It's questionable whether she had no role in creating the money he made while they were married; marriage is usually a bit of a partnership, with a lot of mutual support. You can allege that he would've been just as successful if he hadn't been married during that period, but that's a hard counterfactual to prove, and depends essentially on arguing that his marriage, having kids, etc. provided no support at all that in any way contributed to his success during that period. And if you're going to indulge in those kinds of counterfactuals, then maybe he doesn't deserve his money either, because hey, maybe if he wasn't at PayPal, someone else would've done just a good a job, so he only got his money by essentially having the luck to be "married" to PayPal?
You might be able to make that argument if he hadn't already founded a company and sold it for over $300M before he married her. Paypal itself had already been founded and was well under way before they married. It's disingenuous at best to ascribe any of his success to her.
That's one reason that legally, money made while married is assumed to be evenly split, absent a separate agreement. I don't have any particular insight into his situation, but if, say, my parents had gotten divorced when I was a kid, I would've considered it fair if they split the money evenly, even though my dad officially made all of it.
That is a holdover from when women didn't work, which is why it makes sense with respect to your parents.
Plus, if you put it the other way, he's keeping 90-95% of their shared wealth, over a billion dollars, and yet is unhappy with that, because he wants more? It doesn't sound like it has anything to do with control over his companies, either; the amount of stock she's asking for wouldn't affect controlling stakes at all. Seems like it's purely the money: either it's just greed (he has a ton, but wants even more), or some variety of spite (he doesn't care about the money, but doesn't want his ex-wife to get it).
He's the one that worked for the money. What was her contribution, sex and moral support? That's the most expensive hooker in history. Seems that the best bet for successful men is to refuse to marry. Even if the wife signs a pre-nup, they can still keep the man in court for years to force a settlement.
The real issue here is the duplicity of the womens lib movement. It's fair, equal, and all that jazz until it hurts women financially. Some time ago, a girl asked me to go to dinner with her, and while we were there, she spent a great deal of time telling me all about her political views, especially about women's rights. Of course, when the bill comes, she pushes it over to me. We're equal, women deserve everything the same as men, etc., until the bill comes, then it's "you should buy me dinner because I'm a pretty girl and you're supposed to." I'd have bought dinner anyway, but don't lecture me if it's all just bullshit. Same situation here.
"It's fair, equal, and all that jazz until it hurts women financially."
Most people have no ideology. Instead, they have a "retirement plan", so to speak. People oppose taxes when they're wealthy, they are for social welfare when they're poor, they oppose government intervention when that means their looting will cease to be profitable, they are for government intervention when they need a bailout. "Liberal" women are all for immigration when the ones losing jobs are male engineers, but they strongly oppose immigration when the immigrants are superior specimens of the female gender from the former Soviet block (they know they can't compete in the dating market with foreign "talent").
If your friend asked you to go have dinner with her, she has to pay at least 50%. Her parasitic behavior only shows that she has no respect for you whatsoever. If you have some self-respect, I hope you mind-fucked her until she felt guilty for pushing the bill to you. Bonus points if you made her cry in public.
So you're arguing that, even though he signed a contract (yes, marriage is a legal contract, and you shouldn't sign it if you don't agree with the terms), he should be able to back out of it, because of some general dislike for "the womens lib movement"? If he wanted to sign a different contract, he could've asked for a prenuptial agreement (which is common among the wealthy), or not gotten married. But he didn't; he signed the contract, so now he should honor it according to the terms he agreed to, and any attempt to weasel out of them is duplicitous bullshit. Should PayPal be able to back out of its contract with him post-IPO, and decide that it didn't want to give him that much money after all, because he didn't "deserve" it?
And yes, I do think moral support plus raising five of your children is sufficient support to deserve half the money you made in that period. If he thought otherwise, he shouldn't have signed a contract saying so. Since he did, the only honorable thing to do is to honor his obligations, not the current pathetic show he's making of trying to claw his way out of them after the fact.
No one is disputing that their five children should be looked after and supported. However, money for this should be allocated on the basis of their need rather than Elon Musk's ability to pay, and I'm not sure how one could spend more than a couple of million per child.
In fact, beyond a certain point I'd suggest that having lots of money is probably a negative influence in a child's life.
Conceiving and caring for five kids has a pretty huge opportunity cost. In addition, her staying home and taking care of the kids meant that he had more time to dedicate to earning money. The conventional wisdom of divorce proceedings is that a mother should be compensated for both that opportunity cost and get a cut for helping her husband free up time to dedicate to work, as well as the actual maintenance costs of raising the kids.
> an unreasonable amount of wealth given she didn't create it in the first place
Western society at large believes that domestic life plays a very significant role in the process of creating wealth which is why most jurisdictions award an equal split of property at the time of divorce.
In this particular case they have five sons together and it seems like they met before most of Mr. Musk's ventures were started. There is a lot more effort to a decade or more of supporting a fledging entrepreneur and raising five sons than just marrying well.
[1] Which is over forty times the lifetime earnings of the average American simply for marrying well.